Local man headed to world oyster shucking championships // VIDEO

Robert Daffin shucks oysters during the 2012 U.S. National Oyster Shucking Contest, where he earned the honor of representing the United States in the Galway, Ireland International Oyster Opening Competition.

Source: Facebook

By Valerie Garman / The News Herald

Published: Sunday, August 25, 2013 at 05:59 PM.

PANAMA CITY
BEACH
— Robert Daffin grew up shucking oysters at backyard barbeques.

Now the
Panama City
Beach
local is headed across the
Atlantic
to compete with some of the best oyster shuckers in the world.

Daffin was recently crowned 2012 U.S. Oyster Shucking Champion at the St. Mary’s County Oyster Festival in Leonardtown, Md. and will represent the U.S. at the World Oyster Shucking Championship in Galway, Ireland next month.

“I’ve been shucking oysters for about 35 years,” said Daffin, a bartender and shucker at Bayou on the Beach Café and Oyster Bar. “I started off like most people do, if you’re from around here. You start off in the back yard with your family shucking oysters during cookouts.”

That backyard shucking experience soon translated to a paycheck for Daffin.

Now the Panama CityBeach local is headed across the Atlantic to compete with some of the best oyster shuckers in the world.

Daffin was recently crowned 2012 U.S. Oyster Shucking Champion at the St. Mary’s County Oyster Festival in Leonardtown, Md. and will represent the U.S. at the World Oyster Shucking Championship in Galway, Ireland next month.

“I’ve been shucking oysters for about 35 years,” said Daffin, a bartender and shucker at Bayou on the Beach Café and Oyster Bar. “I started off like most people do, if you’re from around here. You start off in the back yard with your family shucking oysters during cookouts.”

That backyard shucking experience soon translated to a paycheck for Daffin.

“When I started in the restaurant business, I got asked to shuck oysters because I knew how,” he said. “It wasn’t something I planned to do, but I was good at it.”

Daffin entered his first oyster shucking contest in Foley, Ala. back in 1999. Since then, he’s traveled to dozens of contests across the country.

“Anywhere there’s oysters, there’s a shucking contest,” he said. “One year, I got invited to a festival in Alabama and I won that one. Basically, from that one I went to another one through that festival, and it’s just kind of grown from there.”

Daffin also worked at Dusty’s Oyster Bar for about 10 years, and when it comes to becoming a faster shucker, he said practice makes perfect.

“I’ve done it for 35 years, so you just kind of build your own technique,” Daffin said. “It’s just something you get better at as you do it.”

Daffin, like most Panhandle locals, grew up shucking large Apalachicola oysters, but the world championship competition will present a more delicate mollusk variety, a “European flat.”

“There’s not as much twisting and torquing like you do here,” Daffin said. “The key to it is, you want to cut that shell off very nicely. Nobody likes a mangled oyster, and nobody likes an oyster in mud or with shell in it.”

Daffin isn’t the first local to represent the U.S. in Ireland. His long-time friend, Mike Martin, won the U.S. Shucking Championships three years in a row.

“It’s just the draw of the oyster,” he said. “Either it’s your day, or it’s not.”